Q&A: ShakinArt on MOVE W I T H (OUT)#4 Venice

MOVE W I T H (OUT) traveled to Italy during the final weekend of the Venice Biennale and visited the 3D Gallery in Mestre and the Officina delle Zattere in Venice. At both spaces, two live art interventions, collectively titled “Play in Two Acts – The Justice” were presented in conjunction with the trunk project. ShakinArt presented the first live art intervention at 3D Gallery. The artists, Jonathan De Checchi and Marco Zocca JeanPierre share their thoughts on their experience with us here.

Something Human: The project MOVE W I T H (OUT) Venice was presented during your performance at the 3D Gallery in Mestre. How do the themes explored by the trunk project (travel, migration, crossing boundaries) relate to your practice?

ShakinArt: The notions of ‘travel’ symbolised by the trunk, represent the basis of our artistic research. We both share an innate passion for travelling, towards which we dedicated extensive periods of our lives. If we had to identify one of the sources of inspiration for our practice, we would definitely find it in the experiences we had abroad where the exchanges we have with other cultures, show us quite clearly the limits of our vision.

Our research focuses on destroying these limits through the attempts at representing the realities which our ‘Western culture’ wants to forget. We reject the current status quo where wars occur because of manmade arbitrary borders, as well as the lines that divide those who starve from the ones who have abundance but waste resources. With our work, Shakinart wants to address our complicity in building a global system of which we are at once creators and victims.

Something Human: I posed a similar question to Adolfina De Stefani who not only curated your installation at the 3D Gallery, but also presented the second part to the live interventions. The two performances presented in Venice were inspired by the ‘Lapedusa Shipwreck’ news report, which had a great impact on Italian public opinion. These two live art interventions were critical toward the Italian authorities’ behaviour in the occasion that delayed the rescue. Could you please tell us more about your perspective?

ShakinArt: The role played by the Italian government or by the police was not mentioned during the opening performance nor in the installation itself. It was not our intention to suggest that there was a clear and easy scapegoat, but to show the guilt shared by everyone – how we were all complicit, by asking the public to symbolically walk on the portraits of those victims in the installation.

Aside from this, if we had to express a personal opinion about the role played by the Italian government, we would say it was awful; not only for the management of the refugee streams at all levels (i.e. the immigration shelters), but for the indifference toward the ‘external world’, an attitude which also reflects that of the average Italian citizen. Let’s consider the actual political class as an exact representation of the three common generalisations of the Italian population: the ‘indecisive’, the ‘blatant capitalists’ and the angry but unengaged. They share the same apathy and blindness towards the real problems of the country, and yet still hope to endorse the very system which has already demonstrated itself to be disastrous in managing our planet’s resources and creating unbearable conditions of injustice for human beings.

Something Human: The audience was deeply moved by the installation and the live art performance, which was presented in collaboration of young Anna Gardellin. Did you expect this response? How did you interpret this?

ShakinArt: It was more that we hoped for such a response. We laboured a whole week to complete the installation, working from 6pm to late every night, and we were assisted by a number of friends who worked with us, whom we can’t thank enough. We were extremely committed to the project, and we knew when you do something from the heart it brings the results. However we also believe that even if it were only one single person who would have gone home with questions after seeing our work, then all this exhausting work would still have been rewarded. Though the outcomes of our endeavours may vary, we still feel a satisfaction as our work is based on the certainty that art for us is not a temporary passion but a constant necessity.

Something Human: ShakinArt is described as an ‘Artistic Project […] supported by a wide and diverse pool of young emerging artists’. Could you please tell us more about how these relationships contribute to your creative process?

ShakinArt: While Jonathan and I personally work on every possible detail of our artworks, we are not deluded to think we are necessarily the best placed to complete our intended work. We understand that some ideas that cross our minds can be better realised by others for more effective results. We are not afraid to involve anyone, in anyway we consider suitable, with the only condition that the collaborator must have a serious desire to collaborate and build something together. We also seek out talented artists who have different visions in order to create opportunities for debate and fully test the underlying message of the project.

We don’t think of ourselves as just creators but also as ‘channels’ for an ‘other world’. If we have an aim, it is that which values the importance of that world, from which everyone draws on unconsciousl, while usually ignoring it. This “other world” and the freedom it offers frightens most people.

Something Human: In your artist statement, you state an aim of ‘shaking the art’ i.e., of mixing it up. Is this aim focused on the Italian or Venetian art scene where you work, or does it also have a wider field of reference? Following that, could you please also tell us more about what you think about contemporary art in Italy?

ShakinArt: Our artist statement is not related to any artistic microcosm, it is not just about our domestic scene, rather, it summarises our overall vision. Along our different journeys, we have asked ourselves a lot about what means to be artists, or to ‘do art’, and the answer we found is that all the answers are wrong. The only definition we know, is that art is a creation, and the goal of a creation is to have a function, and in the specific case of art, that art has ‘to make a communication’. That is the only rule we follow – every work we make, must communicate something.

While simple, this isn’t banal – nowadays in the artistic world, there are a lot of self-indulgent people who are ready to transform into art every insignificant object, inventing fictional and self-celebratory meanings. For us, it only becomes meaningful when the performance has ended, and chatting with the audience, we understand that our message has moved them.

As artists, we don’t want to hide behind empty philosophies or play on facile ‘understand-don’t-understand’ concepts. For us, art is a social instrument, so it has to have a real effect, not only a pretence. I’m not talking about a mental process of art creation but an emotional one.

The lucidity we desire is not achieved by analysing every element we build into our work, but in looking to facilitate more significant but subtle channels, like the ‘conscience’ and the symbolic keys that communicate within it. Thus we hope our work will have a surprisingly provocative impact. If the audience is stimulated and moved, it signals to us that our art is valuable. If this doesn’t happen and the public didn’t receive a clear message, and identified our actions only from an aesthetic point of view, (even as the aesthetic is an important factor), we can’t be satisfied and must try harder to improve the content the next time.

Interview in Italian by Anna Viani
Translation and interpretation by Alessandra Cianetti and Annie Jael Kwan
Photos by alikati